One or more aspects of the invention relate, in general, to programmable hardware devices, and in particular, to re-programming such devices.
An example of a programmable hardware device is a field programmable gate array (FPGA). A field programmable gate array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured after manufacturing. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). FPGAs can be used to implement any logical function that an ASIC could perform. They contain programmable logic components (i.e., logic blocks) and a hierarchy of reconfigurable interconnects that allow the blocks to be connected to one another in various configurations.